The Dilemma

Synopsis

So, Vince Vaughn, knowing your best friend is stressed to breaking point, what do you do if you see his wife canoodling with another man? That's the problem facing Vaughn's hapless Ronny when he spies sneaky Geneva (Winona Ryder) cheating on his old pal and business partner Nick (Kevin James). But the longer Ronny dithers, the more suspicions he brings on himself. If honesty is the best policy, it's also the most painful in Ron Howard's knockabout moral conundrum.

Director

Ron Howard

Cast

Vince Vaughn

Kevin James

Jennifer Connelly

Winona Ryder

Channing Tatum

Review

Less a comedy than a manic melodrama with a sprinkling of chuckles, The Dilemma finds Vince Vaughn on similar rocky-relationship ground to 2006's The Break-Up.

Though no great departure, his role as the morally conflicted Ronny does at least see a reduction in the smugness levels that have kept him on Hollywood's Most Punchable list for four years straight.

While preparing a hothouse proposal for his girlfriend Beth (Jennifer Connelly), Ronny (Vaughn) spies his best friend's wife Geneva (Ryder) frolicking in the foliage with a young buck (Channing Tatum).

Obviously, Nick (James, aka Zookeeper and Paul Blart: Mall Cop) ought to know. But as the technical genius behind their car engine business, he's currently killing himself to perfect the revolutionary motor that will secure their financial future.

So with both their livelihoods depending on it, Ronny decides to drop the marital bombshell another day. Which merely throws more spanners in the works.

Confrontations backfire. More dirty secrets are exposed. Innocent fish die. And as a former gambler, Ronny's suspicious behaviour inevitably leads Beth to assume that all bets are sadly back on.